by Greg Herren
“You don’t know who killed Tara?” This was from Venus.
I shook my head. “No, I don’t. But I have a feeling Enid just might—I think Enid knows a lot of things she isn’t telling anyone.” The lights in Enid’s apartment went off. “What the—?” As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I saw her coming down her back stairs in a hurry. “Where is she going?”
“Come on!” Colin took off running across Coliseum Street. After a moment’s hesitation, I ran after him.
Colin got to her just as she was getting into her car. I heard her snap, “Let go of my car door!” When I came up she gave me a beaming smile. “Scotty, will you tell your friend to let me go? I have to be somewhere, and I’m really in a hurry.” She scowled at Colin. “You’re really being rude.”
“I’m really sorry, Enid, but we have to ask you some more questions.” I smiled back at her, hoping my friendly tone was just as insincere as hers sounded.
Her eyes narrowed. “I’ve already answered your questions, and you’ve wasted enough of my time tonight already,” she snapped, tugging on the car door again. “I have nothing else to say to either one of you. Now let me go or I’m calling the police.”
“No need—we’re right here, ma’am.” Venus flashed her badge as she walked around me. “Now, you need to step out of the car.”
“I know my rights! I don’t have to talk to you!” Her eyes flashed crazily. “If I’m not under arrest, you can’t detain me! Now get out of my way!” Her voice kept rising with every word.
“Get. Out. Of. The CAR,” Venus said through gritted teeth. “NOW!”
Instead, Enid turned the key and revved the engine. Colin stepped to the inside of the door and tried to reach over the steering column to shut the engine off. But as he leaned inside the car, Enid slammed the gearshift into reverse and shoved her foot down on the gas pedal. The car flew backward. Blaine, who’d been standing behind it, barely had time to jump out of the way. He hit a slick spot on the pavement and his feet went out from under him as the car, its tires squealing loudly, spun while Enid turned the steering wheel hard.
The car slid sideways into the street and Colin came flying out. He hit the pavement with a sickening thud and his head bounced.
He didn’t move.
Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. I started running toward Colin, but it took forever. My legs felt like they were mired in molasses. Enid’s back tires spun and squealed as she slammed the car into drive. The door swung shut and I saw a triumphant smile on her face as I reached Colin and knelt down. His eyes were closed.
Out of the corner of my eyes I could see movement. As I fumbled for my phone I saw two black figures run out from the park—and I heard gunshots. I turned my head and saw Enid’s car go around the corner—but it was out of control. It was spinning and weaving from side to side and then it disappeared from my line of vision. There was a loud crash and the sound of shattering glass. The two black figures—who had to be the Ninjas—dashed off down Coliseum Street. I heard Venus swear loudly and she ran past me, her gun drawn. On my other side I saw Blaine sitting up groggily, shaking his head.
Colin opened his eyes with a moan.
“Are you okay?” I gasped out as I punched the keypad of my phone.
He winced as he sat up. “I’m okay, but my head hurts—it hurts like a bitch. Don’t call nine-one-one, I don’t need an ambulance.”
I could hear the operator saying something. I disconnected the call. “Are you sure?”
“Now you know how I felt the other day,” he said. He moved his arms and legs and winced again. “I think I may have cracked a rib.” He started gasping a bit. “That fucking hurts!” He winked at me and grinned. “You should see your face! Seriously, Scotty, I’ve had worse happen. This is nothing.”
“I’ll be right back.” I said. I hurried over to where Blaine was sitting up. “Blaine, are you okay?”
His eyes looked a little glassy and unfocused, but he nodded. “Yeah—I just bumped my head and got the wind knocked out of me. Did they get that crazy bitch?”
“I’m going to go check on that right now, if you’re sure you’re okay?”
He waved his hand, and I walked quickly down to the corner.
Enid’s car had jumped the curb and smashed head-on into a live oak tree. Steam was rising from the crumpled front end of the car, and I could see the windows had all broken or cracked from the impact.
Enid was sitting on the sidewalk across the street, her head down. Venus was kneeling beside her. Lindy and Rhoda walked up. “Nice shooting,” I said.
Lindy grinned. “Thanks.” She shrugged. “Shooting out a tire isn’t much of a challenge.”
“Can you two do me a favor?” When they nodded, I went on, “Can you go make sure Colin’s okay? He was in the car when she took off, and fell out—he hit his head and thinks he cracked a rib, but he doesn’t want an ambulance. I want to go talk to my aunt.”
Rhoda’s jaw set. “No ambulance? We’ll see about that.”
I could hear Enid talking in her little-girl voice as I walked up. She glanced over at me and away quickly, but not before I saw her nose was bloody and her upper lip was swollen.
Venus nodded at me and said, “You almost ran over a cop, and Colin Cioni could have been killed by your recklessness. That’s two counts of attempted murder right there, Ms. Bradley.”
Enid choked back a sob. “I don’t know why I did that. I don’t. I’d never hurt anybody.”
Venus looked like she wanted to slug her. I held up my hand and winked at her. I knelt down. “Enid, can I ask you some questions?” I said in a soft, friendly voice.
She looked at me, tears running down her cheeks. “Scotty, you know I’d never hurt anyone on purpose!”
“Of course not,” I cooed back at her. I forced myself to take her hand. “It must have been such a shock when Tara told you she’d killed Marina.”
“It was an accident.” Enid’s voice was muffled, but she sounded defeated. “She didn’t mean to kill her. She just went over there to find out why Marina wasn’t going to pay Joe Billette the money.” She shook her head. “It didn’t make sense to me, either. Marina wouldn’t return my calls, so I told Tara I’d take care of it. I made the arrangements for the wire transfer to his account from mine.” She sobbed again. “But he called me, you know. He e-mailed me one of the recordings.” She lowered her voice. “I couldn’t believe what I was seeing! She was a nasty girl, Scotty—just nasty. She was—she was doing the devil’s work. I couldn’t let that go on. So I canceled the wire transfer.”
She wiped at her eyes. “A girl like that—she had to be stopped. It would only be a matter of time, you know. She liked being looked at, she liked being recorded. That nasty Joe Billette told me so when I talked to him. He said she needed to be stopped, that I’d better be prepared to keep paying people because she’d just do it again and again, that he wasn’t the only one out there with recordings like that…I couldn’t believe my eyes. I called her, told her I wanted to talk to her. Jared had already left—they’d had a big fight.”
“Why did you want to talk to her?” I asked, squeezing her hand.
“I had to tell her.” She gave me a look that chilled me to the bone. The façade she hid behind was cracked, and this was the real woman—someone I didn’t know. Someone I didn’t want to know. “She wasn’t going to marry Jared. She was going to be exposed. And she killed Marina, my friend Marina. So when she let me in, I told her. Everything. She was going to be exposed, and she needed to turn herself in for Marina’s death. I told her she had to come clean, it was the only way she could save her soul.” Her face hardened. “She started screaming at me, calling me names. She told me horrible lies about Marina.” She shuddered. “She told me Marina was a lesbian, and that was why she decided not to pay Joe Billette off, that she was going to come out and leave the church! Can you imagine? What a horrible person that Tara was.”
There were some inconsistencies in her s
tory, but I decided to let her just keep talking.
Tara shook her head and laughed her breathy little-girl laugh. “As if Marina could be a lesbian! Her father was a man of God, she was raised in the Ministry! I picked up the gun and told Tara to shut up. She started calling me names—so I shot her.” She smiled at me. “She needed to be shut up, you know. I couldn’t let her spread those lies about poor Marina. I wiped the gun off and left.”
“You knew Marina was dead before you went over to Tara’s?” I asked gently.
She scrunched up her face and thought for a moment before answering. “No, Tara told me when I got to her apartment she’d actually killed Marina. Because she was a lesbian.”
“Is that what made you so angry with Tara?”
“No. I told you, she was telling lies!” she snapped angrily. “And when Jared told me he’d hired you and Storm to protect him, well, I couldn’t let you find out the truth about any of this. You’d never understand. You’d use Tara’s lies against us. I had to protect the Ministry!” Her face reddened and she spat the words at me. “You’re a sinner.”
“So you paid some of the Ministry’s thugs to try to kill me and Colin.” I stood back up. I gave Venus a look, and she nodded.
“Enid Bradley, you’re under arrest for the murder of Tara Bourgeois…”
I walked away back up Coliseum Street, my stomach churning.
My own aunt had paid someone to kill me.
Because I was a sinner.
As I walked, I remembered what she’d been like when I was a kid. She’d always been happy, it seemed, and always in a good mood. She was always ready to play games, always up for going to the movies or renting some. She’d always been fun.
But it had all been a façade. Underneath, she’d been desperately unhappy. As she got older, it got worse.
And now—well, I’d be really surprised if her lawyer didn’t plead diminished mental capacity.
It started raining again as I got back to where the Ninjas and Colin were leaning against Mom’s Prius. Rhoda was bandaging his ribs.
“She confessed,” I said with a sigh. I felt really tired and wanted nothing more than to go home and get in my bed and sleep for about a week. “She killed Tara. She paid Kennicott to kill me.”
“I’m sorry, Scotty.” Lindy put an arm around me. “It must be hard.”
“I’ll be okay.” I forced a smile. “I mean, it’s sad, but I lost my aunt a long time ago. I just want to go home.”
“How’s Blaine?”
“He was just shook up a bit,” Colin replied. “Come on, let’s go home and get out of this rain.”
Colin passed me his phone with a smirk. “Check out this e-mail.”
I looked down at the screen and read:
Confirmed: money transfer into Kennicott bank account came from a Whitney National Bank account in the name of Enid Elizabeth Bradley. There are some other suspicious activities on the account as well. There is a pending transfer in the amount of $400,000 to an account at Metairie Savings and Loan under the name of Joseph R. Billette. This transfer was initiated on the afternoon of January 23, but was canceled on the morning of January 24.
So there it was in black and white.
“Forward it to Venus,” I said wearily. “And let’s get out of here.”
We told Venus we’d come by the police station and make formal statements in the morning. She nodded, but pointed at Rhoda. “You need to come down to the station now.” She held up a hand as Lindy and Rhoda both starting protesting. “I’m not charging you, but it would be my ass if I didn’t get your statement tonight.” She waved at the body being loaded into the coroner’s wagon. “You did shoot someone, after all. And we got the driver, too—he got picked up out on Airline Highway—and he’s willing to talk.” She sighed. “Sorry about your aunt, Scotty.”
I just nodded and walked back through the rain to the Jag.
“Are you really okay?” Colin asked as I started the car and pulled away from the curb.
“Like I said, I’m just really tired. Let’s just get the car back, give Mom her keys, and go home.”
We rode the rest of the way in silence. We trudged around the corner and up the back stairs to Mom and Dad’s apartment. When I unlocked the back door, Mom came running. “There you two are!” She looked from me to Colin and back again. “We’ve been so worried—what’s happened? You both look terrible.” She lowered her voice. “Frank’s here.”
“What?” I asked.
“When he got back from Biloxi, he got worried and came over here.”
I walked past her into the living room, and Frank jumped up. “Scotty!” He threw his arms around me and crushed me in a bear hug. “I was so worried…”
“Why didn’t you call?” His arms felt so good around me I didn’t want him to ever let go.
“I—” He sighed and kissed the top of my head. “If you guys were out working on the case, I didn’t want to interrupt. I mean, you were with Colin, so—” He looked over my shoulder. He let go of me and hugged Colin, who winced.
“Easy there, big guy.” Colin gently pushed him away. “I cracked a rib.”
“What happened?” Dad asked, putting down the pipe he was loading.
Even though I just wanted to go to bed, we sat down and told them everything.
“Enid better hope I never get my hands on her,” Mom said grimly. “And Father Dan was Tara’s father? Wow. You think you know somebody.”
The back buzzer rang, and Dad walked through to the kitchen.
“I think we should feel sorry for Enid, despite everything.” I replied. “She’s not in her right mind—who knows how long she’s been unstable? Who paid enough attention to her to even notice?”
“It’s hard for me to believe she’s a killer,” Mom replied. “A mean-spirited, small-minded backstabbing bitch, yes. But a killer? That’s a bit of a stretch for me, I have to say.”
I took a deep breath. “It’s sad more than anything else. She really thought she was doing a good thing by playing matchmaker for Jared and Tara. But when she found out about what Tara was really like, she couldn’t stand the thought of Tara marrying her little angel.”
“I wasn’t going to marry her.”
I turned and stared at my cousin Jared. He looked like he’d just gotten out of bed and hadn’t bothered to wash up. He was wearing a ratty-looking pair of jeans with rips here and there, and a Tulane sweatshirt under a leather jacket. There was stubble on his face and his curly hair was a mess.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
He ran one of his big hands through his messy hair. “I heard about what happened. With Aunt Enid.” He plopped down on the couch. “I wanted to make sure everyone was okay.” He looked over at Colin. “Are you okay, Colin?”
“He’s fine.” I crossed my arms. “Who told you?”
“Aunt Enid called.” He swallowed. “She didn’t want to call MiMi or Papa, so she called me. I had no idea…” He swallowed again, looking at each of us in turn. “She was—so unbalanced.” He buried his face in his hands. “This is all my fault.”
You’re taking responsibility for something? I did a double take, not quite sure how to react.
And then I remembered about his mother and Uncle Skipper, and softened a little bit. It’s been hard for Jared, I reminded myself, and that’s why the adults cut him so much slack when we were kids. Besides, we’re adults now.
“Have a seat.” Mom patted the sofa next to her.
Jared sat down. “None of you—none of us—would have been involved in any of this stupid shit if it weren’t for me being such a coward.” He covered his face in his hands and leaned forward onto his knees.
I folded my arms. “You mean about Dominique, right?”
He nodded.
“Dominique?” This was from Dad. “What does she have to do with any of this?”
“He’s been seeing her,” I said before he could open his mouth. “For quite some time. But he didn’t want anyo
ne in the family to know.” I sat down and leaned back. “That’s why he trotted good ole Tara out for Papa and MiMi’s consumption.”
“Enid found out. I don’t know how she did, but she knew. After the Atlanta game, she invited me over for dinner. She told me—” He took a shaky breath. “She told that Papa and MiMi—and Dad—would never approve. Papa would cut off my trust fund, cut me out of the family.”
“That’s not true,” Dad said. “Sure, they wouldn’t have been happy about it at first, but they would have never cut you off. Never.”
“Seriously, Jared, they might have gotten angry with you—and maybe Papa would have cut off your trust—but they would have gotten over it eventually.” I forced a smile onto my face. “He cut mine off when I dropped out of Vanderbilt.” Of course, it took nine years before he released it again, when I turned thirty.
He looked at me, and the pain in his eyes wounded me. “Why wouldn’t I believe Enid? She’s the only person in the family who’s ever cared about me.” He went on in a rush, “I never see my mother. Even now that I’m grown, she doesn’t want anything to do with me. Dad and MiMi are always drunk. And Papa—” He shook his head.
I was so shocked I couldn’t speak.
He looked at Mom. “Anyway, Enid told me she knew the perfect girl for me, the former Miss Louisiana, and she would set me up with her. She said Tara was just the kind of girl Papa and MiMi would approve of.” He scowled. “I figured I could show Tara off as my girlfriend but keep seeing Dominique. It was stupid.”
“Jared—” I started to say but he cut me off.
“I was scared, okay?” he snapped. “None of you know what it’s like, you know?” He glared at me. “You want to trade places with me, Scotty? You want to grow up with my dad and the stepmom of the moment?”
“Well, when you put it that way,” I said slowly, “no, not really.”
“That’s what I thought. You don’t know how lucky you guys have it. Papa wrote you off a long time ago, Uncle John, Aunt Cecile—no offense, but you know what I mean.” He had the decency to blush. “So your kids—they never had to put up any of the shit I had to. ‘You’re a Bradley, Bradley men do this, Bradley men don’t do that, Bradley men play football, Bradley men…’” He shook his head. “Nothing’s good enough for him. ‘Well, Southern Mississippi isn’t a major school, but a football scholarship is a football scholarship.’” He leaned forward. “I fucking hated playing football. Hated it. I would have quit in high school, if I could have.”
